Bitchin’ Camaro, Douchebag Columnist

Chuck Yarborough is a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  He’s also—and there’s no polite way to put this—a total fucking douchebag, a real dumbass moron.  Here are his words on the $12,000 incident.

A guy named Jim Kenefick runs a Web site called Moorewatch.com that is devoted to ripping documentary maker Michael Moore, creator of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and a new anti-health care industry flick, “Sicko.” According to the story he told the New York Daily News, Kenefick ran into hefty financial problems after his wife became seriously ill. And, this being the age of blogging, he wrote about it. So an anonymous donor sent him a $12,000 check. Suspicious - I guess he gets those Internet offers from Paraguayan soybean exporters, too - he deposited the check in a separate account and waited for it to clear. When it did, he used it to pay bills. I know you’ve already figured out that the money came from Moore. What’s worse, Kenefick figured that out, too, and still spent it. For the record, the Daily News columnists who broke the story, Rush & Molloy, said their source was not Moore. Not that it would matter to Kenefick. “I’m not an idiot,” he said. “I know when to say yes to something, even if the string attached is obvious. What kind of moron turns down a free 12 grand?” Well, at least now we know the going rate for ethics, don’t we, Mr. Kenefick? [Emphasis added]

I see.  Let’s see how this works.  Jim is going through a period of tough financial times.  He posts for recommendations on insurance programs, and settles on one which costs about $1,000 a month.  Some anonymous benefactor sends him money.  Jim is suspicious as hell of were it came from, but he’s also not retarded, and when someone gives you an anonymous gift, you don’t refuse to accept it because its provenance is not written in stone.  We get large donations from various people every time we do our yearly server fees donation drive.  One year we got $2,000 (maybe more) from a well-known television producer.  We’ve gotten gifts of $500 and $1,000 a number of times.  So it was perfectly within the realm of reality for some super-rich benefactor who wanted to remain anonymous to just send in a check.  Ultimately all that Jim was really able to deduce is that there are a lot of these financial institutions in the ultra-rich area in which Mikey lives and works.  This wasn’t evidence of anything, of course, just one bit of evidence that led to it coming from Moore.  Nothing personal from Mikey stating that, despite our differences, he’d been fortunate in his life and would like to help someone out just because it was the right thing to do.  Just the money.

As Jim said, when you’re in tough financial times, you’d have to be insane to turn down money on a hunch that it came from a disreputable source.  So were his actions that unreasonable?  Let me put it this way, I make more money than Jim and I *still* would have taken the check and bought a jetski with it or something.

Let’s look at it from the other perspective.  Mikey sends in the check, and goes through a multi-step process to transfer funds from either his own personal account or his Dog Eat Dog films account.  He needed something more indirect, and chose the check that Jim eventually received.  No note from Mikey, asking to just keep this between us, nothing.  So Jim, who really needed money at the time, took it, just as anyone of us in his situation would. 

So, how does Old Cockbag at the plain dealer view Jm’s actions?

Well, at least now we know the going rate for ethics, don’t we, Mr. Kenefick?

Ethics?  Listen, you donkey punch.  You can scream ethics all you like, but where were the ethics attached to Mike’s gift if he expressly intended to exploit them later?  Where were his ethics in using the emotionalism and stress of a man with a sick wife and a bad financial situation to really be in a position to refuse a $12,000 gift?  Where were the ethics when he decided to make his “anonymous” gift public as part of a publicity campaign for his new movie?  Those ethics violations don’t bother you, I guess, because you’re a boot-licking Michael Moore sycophant.

At least Jim got paid $12,000 dollars?  How much of a check did you receive?  Or did you lose it slowly, like so many in your position, who sell out just slowly enough to keep the pay raises coming?  Tell us, what’s the going rate for ethics in journalism?  I bet it’s a hell of a lot lower than what Jim received.  “Oooh, look, a picture next to my byline!  My Mom will think I’m so cool!”